Word of Salvation – Vol. 45 No.30 – August 2000

 

Hidden Grace

 

A Sermon by Rev G H Milne

on Ruth 1:1-18

 

Beloved in the Lord,

Introduction:

There are times in the life of the Church when God appears not to hear the cry of His people.  And there are the times when individuals can also testify to an experience of isolation and loneliness and the absence of God.  And yet with the eyes of faith, resting upon the testimony of the Word of God, we can say that while God’s grace might be hidden from our eyes, He is there nevertheless blessing His people in spite of appearances to the contrary.

Today we will reflect upon something of this hidden grace as we take an introductory look at the book of Ruth.

The true story of Ruth is set in the time of the Judges, when God raised up military tribal leaders from time to time, like Gideon and Samson, to overcome the enemies of God’s people.  These men and women (at least one) were especially equipped by the Holy Spirit to rule or judge the people.  This form of government, if we could call it that, preceded the establishment of the Monarchy under Saul.  It was different from the Monarchy because God was seen to be the King and he ruled directly through these Spirit-empowered Judges, whom He raised up.

It’s appropriate that the first man mentioned here is named Elimelech, meaning ‘my God is King’.  This idea that God rules directly is an important one in Ruth because it highlights the sovereign God in the events that were going to take place in the lives of these people.

Today we will notice, as the story unfolds, that God is gracious toward His people, though that grace is obscured by circumstances.  And as we notice this, we will see:
              Firstly that God’s grace exists even in judgment.
              Secondly, God’s grace lives in the midst of suffering, and
              Finally, that God’s grace makes a seemingly hopeless circumstance
                                     the seedbed of His greatest Triumph.

1.  God’s grace exists even in judgement

It would not have seemed so to Elimelech and his family as they were forced to go to a foreign country to survive.  Ironically, they had to leave the “house of bread”, – for that is what Bethlehem means in English – to find bread elsewhere.  And remember, too, that this land of Canaan was the land promised to the Jewish people – a land of milk and honey.

So, we have a man whose name declares that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is King, with a wife and two sons emigrating to Moab, a pagan nation where God is not King, but where foreign gods rule.  The Moabites descended from Lot and were related to the Jews.  The Jews, in Deuteronomy were told not to harass the Moabites because God had given them their land, too.  As Baal worshippers, however, these Moabites became a snare to the Israelites, drawing the Israelites away from the worship of the one true God.

The immediate reason that had forced Elimelech to make this decision was this famine that seemed to threaten to destroy them as a family.  At least we must assume that, for he must have left his land, his inheritance and left his country, perhaps without hope of returning.  We are not given any further detail here, but we can imagine that this family felt utterly despairing as they were forced off their land and far away from God’s people.  The God who had seemed so real in giving them the land and in performing the great miracles of previous generations, and perhaps their own generation as well, must have deserted them.  Or perhaps they thought that He wasn’t real after all and He was therefore not worth following.

Perhaps you have felt like that.  God has not given you what you wanted.  You have heard sermons and read in the Bible about all sorts of promises, and yet your situation still, in your mind, remains desperate.  God has not given you an abundant life, and instead of plenty and joy you only find famine and despair.

The Bible teaches us that everything has a reason, and while that reason may often be impossible to discern in our day, it was not in Elimelech’s day.  Why do we go through trials today?  There are a number of reason and we won’t describe them, but in the case before us, it seems very likely that Israel’s sin had brought about this famine.  Although we are not told here, this famine was probably a drought.

And we know that God promised to smite the land if the children of Israel were disobedient.  In the covenant renewal ceremony on the plains of Moab, recorded in Deuteronomy 29, we read of the curse that would come upon the Israelites if they broke the covenant.  In that ceremony, Moses poses the question that future nations will ask concerning Israel, “And all the nations shall say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land?  Why this great outburst of anger?’  Then men shall say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt and they went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not allotted to them!’”

This warning had been given to the Israelites at other times and we read in Leviticus 26 where disobedience of God’s commandments would specifically bring a famine on the land.  That Israel was ripe for judgment is evident from the fact that a famine had come upon the land.  This was a certain sign that God had withdrawn His hand from this people.

It is very difficult to read providence in this way today.  God has not given us those sorts of national promises as He did Israel, which was a special case.  And yet we know that God does justly judge the nations in time and space for their rejection of Him as well.  And any calamity that comes upon us may be evidence of His wrath against our national sin, or even the sin of His Church.

We can assume that Elimelech was also not innocent of sin, because he brought them to a place where the only wives his sons could find would be Moabites.  To marry outside the covenant community was itself a great sin.  And that they had not been weaned off their own gods is evident by the fact that Orpah returned to her own people and her own gods, although as we will see, Ruth desired to follow the God of Naomi.  And yet in all of this, God’s grace was present with His people as we shall see.

God’s grace, then, is seen in the midst of suffering.  And this is our second point.

2.  God’s grace then is seen in the midst of suffering

But God might not have appeared gracious when Naomi loses Elimelech, who dies fairly early in the piece.  The two sons marry these pagan wives and then they both die as well.  How shattered Naomi must have felt, and although we don’t have a record of her reaction, we know that in spite of the circumstances of her life that seemed utterly hopeless, she was still a woman of faith.  She did not give up serving God as is evident from Ruth’s later testimony.  “Your people shall be my people and your God my God”, Ruth says in verse 15.

We know this too because Naomi attributes good to God, for when she hears that there is food once again in Judah, she says in verse 8, “The Lord had visited His people in giving them food.”  And she prays that the Lord will “deal kindly” with her daughters-in-law.

Here was faith, was it not?  In spite of all her hardships and all her bereavement, when she has lost her entire family, it seems, and there doesn’t seem to be any grandchildren to give her comfort either, she retains her faith in God.

If your circumstances are such that your hopes and dreams are shattered, follow the example of Naomi here and hang on to your faith.  Keep serving the living God no matter what and remember that God always restores bread to Bethlehem.  There will always be a place to go to find God’s blessing.

And yet there was something mixed about Naomi’s faith, too.  For she pressed her daughters-in-law to go back to their own people and their own gods.  Naomi thought that this would be best for them.  She thought that the thing that they needed most of all was a husband to bear them sons.  And yet she was astray in this.  Surely their greatest need was Christ, even without husbands and sons.  Is it not a better thing to have Christ than anything this world could offer you and me?

Perhaps there are those here who have to make choices between Christ and a place in this world that will bring some temporary happiness.  If Naomi had truly understood the importance of knowing the true and living God with more depth, then surely she would have urged both of these women to return with her to Bethlehem.

And so we can learn from this that though she had a faith, it was a poorly informed faith.  But we can also learn from this that God did not reject her because of her mistakes.  Though we have and will in the future stumble and show that our faith is sometimes compromised, yet God will not reject His people but keep them safe in His arms.  God’s grace was seen in His patient bearing of Naomi’s sin.

And though it was misplaced, there was a beautiful tenderness of affection in Naomi’s heart as she urges her daughters to return to their own people, even though she will suffer grief in separation from them as well, as their mutual tears show in verse 9.

And the fact that this famine overtook the land of milk and honey, was not evidence that God had forgotten Naomi or His undeserving people.  We see that in several ways.  We have seen it already in the way Naomi had been sustained in her faith, though in a foreign land amongst foreign gods and having lost her entire family.  We see it, too, in the conversion of Ruth.  God worked in her heart to bring her to faith in the one true God.  In verse 17, as well as 16, we see Ruth’s faith.  She says, “Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.”

God sometimes brings people to faith in surprising ways and surprising circumstances.  Without the contact that Ruth had had with these worshippers of the Lord, she would not have heard the way of salvation.

No doubt there are those here today who have a story to tell about how God brought them through unusual circumstances to see their need of Jesus.  This teaches us, too, that all of our lives are governed by God’s providence.  Even when we sin against him, as the Israelites had, and as some suggest Elimelech had in taking his family away from the land of promise and not trusting the Lord to provide in Bethlehem, God still showed His grace in those circumstances.  God can even turn our sin into blessing.  Of course, as Paul points out, this is no justification for sin, but it does show the gracious longsuffering nature of our God.

It teaches us, too, that God has a people still in the world, even in the most unlikely places.  This is our motivation to go out and take the gospel into our community.  It is not an easy task and we do not see great fruit from our labours, but it is the way that God gathers His people from outside the covenant community.  We should look upon those outside the church not as hopeless sinners, but we should look upon them with hope as potential saints.

3.  God’s grace makes a seemingly hopeless circumstance the seedbed of His greatest Triumph

But God’s grace was evident in far more than the lives of these two women, Naomi and Ruth.  Because in this remarkable story we are being told that God was bringing circumstances together that would issue in the birth of David in Bethlehem, but still far greater than that, David’s greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The famine itself is a pointer to great things, because it follows a pattern that is evident in the lives of other important links in the chain of redemption in the Old Testament.  The phrase, “There was a famine in the land”, that we have here in verse 1, is only found in two other places in the Old Testament.  We read it first in Genesis 12:1.  There it refers to Abram’s departure to Egypt from the Negev, initiating a series of events that we know are crucially important for the development of the Jewish nation and the birth of the Messiah.  The second time we read this phrase is in chapter 26:1 where we read about Isaac leaving to settle in Gerar because of a famine.

Although the exact phrase does not occur, we know it is because of a famine that Joseph’s brothers journey to Egypt to seek bread.  So for the careful reader of history there is an important parallel taking place here with the departure of Elimelech and his family because of a famine in Judah.  And because we know the outcome of that story, we know that this famine was indeed turned to a marvellous purpose in bringing together the great-grand-parents of David: Boaz and Ruth.

Your circumstances and mine might not have such a grand design, but we can learn from this that God’s redemptive purposes are not thwarted by circumstances that seem anything but friendly.  Whatever famine you are experiencing may mean the salvation of another human being.  Know that the Lord has the whole world in His hands and that nothing can thwart His purposes in your life or in mine.

Let’s also learn that God works in surprising ways, often doing the opposite to what we would expect and to what we would like, to bring about His purposes and our blessing.  That should be a comfort to us in the midst of grief or of circumstances that seem totally out of control.

The story of the book of Ruth is summed up in the name ‘Elimelech’ – My God is King.  Let’s remember that this week as we continue to serve Him where He has placed us.

Amen.